Grizzlies fall in OT, near elimination

WEST VALLEY CITY — The Ontario Reign tied the game at 1 with 30 seconds left in the third period and won 5:11 into overtime to beat the Utah Grizzlies 2-1 Friday night at Maverik Center in game three of the Western Conference Quarterfinal playoff series.

Attendance at the game was 4,864, which is currently the largest attendance in the ECHL's Kelly Cup Playoffs thus far.

"It's unfortunate, I definitely liked the way the guys came out to play tonight," said Grizzlies Head Coach Kevin Colley. "We're not going to quit that's for sure, first goal is to win tomorrow and keep them here until Tuesday. We definitely got to the level that you need to give yourselves a chance to win. We got out of the gate slow the first two games for whatever reason, but we brought it tonight and it's unfortunate we didn't get the win, the guys deserved a better fate."

The Grizzlies took a 1-0 lead 17:45 into the first period as Chris Donovan scored on his first career penalty shot after being pulled down on a breakaway as Utah killed a penalty.

"I just gave a little hesitation move and decided right there to shoot or deke and I saw something, it was good for it to go in," said Donovan.

Utah goaltender Shane Owen stopped the first 34 shots that he saw before the Reign scored on a shot through traffic with an extra-attacker in the final minute and knocked in a rebound off of a face-off win for the victory in sudden death overtime.

"He was seeing the puck, we had three layers there and the puck had eyes on the tying goal and it wasn't meant to be tonight," said Colley on his goaltender.

Owen made eight-straight saves on power-play shots and Utah killed 4 penalties in the first period to keep the game scoreless and eventually take the lead.